Getting the Fix In
by lankypanky
Summary: Meant to be an exploration of a narrative gap in the "Fugitive" chapter, as well as providing some characterization for poor offscreen Sam, just for fun.  Short version: what do you do with a bleeding guy on the subway?
1. Chapter 1

**Author note:**  
I have not done this before, so I may have screwed up some of the format/rating/whatever stuff. I'm sure I'll get an earful soon enough if I've done so, but just as a heads-up. There's nothing really naughty in here, but I thought I'd be safe and go with an M rating so I wouldn't have to worry about saying "fuck" as much as I wanted to. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Since my first playthough, I was curious about the gap in narrative between the end of Fugitive (if you don't get caught) and Madison/Ethan being back in the hotel room (which technically occurs at the beginning of Jayden's Blues). Also some other plot oddities that are, I think, common currency. I put this together for my own pleasure. The biggest way I've changed from the original is to alter the timeline pretty dramatically, lengthening the time until Madison/Ethan make it back the hotel. I figured this didn't matter too much, as the "appointments" that Ethan (The Shark) and Madison (The Doc) have later in the day with their respective encounters are very flexible, and either episode of mad killin' fun could easily be pushed back a few hours. (Actually, now I'm wondering what Ethan does for like ten hours after The Shark in the game; surely he doesn't just sit and cry the entire time?) The first encounter after Fugitive that really needs to happen at its originally scheduled time is Madison's (Sexy Girl) at 11:00, so that she can get to the Blue Lagoon before Norman does. Am I being too analytical? I am probably being too analytical.

* * *

Madison Paige counted her blessings, killing time as she kept watch on the front door.

Sam had come through for her again, and he didn't even _know_ it yet. He really was an invaluable source, though she wasn't sure she ever wanted to know just where he got some of his information from. Thanks to her quick chat with him the previous night, and his routine perusal of the police scanner frequency, she already knew the cops were scouring the streets for Ethan Mars, and why. Thanks to dumb luck, she knew where Ethan was staying, and thanks to her own contrariness, she knew more or less where he was this very moment. _And just think_, she reflected, _I thought those nightmares weren't doing me any favors_. _I guess it just goes to show that it really is all relative. Like time._

Following Ethan to the house on Marble Street had been pretty standard work for her; she was used to tail jobs. She decided to hedge her bets and simply wait down the street for him to emerge. It looked pretty small from the outside, meaning that if she went in, she ran a fairly high risk of him spotting her. But based on what he'd looked like after his previous expedition, he might need a helping hand after this one, too. She was so intent on watching the house that she almost didn't notice the first cop car. When it finally registered for her, time immediately slowed down to a crawl. _Maybe it's coincidence_, she thought, and she was still clinging to that hope when the second one crept by, but the sight of Carter Blake's hated square head through the side window of car number three dispelled the illusion.

It seemed to take hours for the police to pass and get into position, and it must have been days for Madison to bring herself and her motorcycle reluctantly into motion, longer still to realize, _I am actually doing this. I am going to walk past all those cops, and I am going in that house to find Ethan. Why am I doing this?_ Time was so stretched out that it felt dreamlike as she tried to mentally record the position of every policeman she could see as she rode past, and scanned their faces to see if any of them recognized her in return. No one seemed to care, and she did a double-take at Blake's car and the pale, thin face in the passenger seat. _That's not Ash in there with him, Ash is over there. Who is that? Have to keep an eye on him until I know if he's a screwup, too.  
_

It was at least another week while she got off her bike, removed her helmet, and walked up to the front door, ducking her head and its distinctive pixie haircut in a half-hearted attempt to make herself inconspicuous. She couldn't help noting Blake's reaction in her peripheral vision. _Oh, he knows I'm here. He knows, and he is not happy. _There was still, however, no flicker of recognition on his angry face. _That arrogant jerk never did like to look me in the eyes during those Q&A sessions. That's it, I'm going in_. It took an eternity for that metal door to swing shut behind her.

Then an unsteady and bleeding Ethan was lurching towards a tattered couch, she was tearing apart the boarded-up windows on the first floor, and the two of them were moving through mazes of cars and people with what seemed like painful slowness, ignoring the cops' repeated orders to stop – all in a patch of time that had sped up so dramatically around them that she was sure she must be missing chunks of it. By the time she was pushing Ethan onto the subway tracks and jumping down after him, she only barely had time to wonder, _How, exactly, did I get myself here?_ Then they'd made it onto a train, the car doors closed behind them, time righted itself, and she answered herself, crazily, _Depends on who you ask. It's all relative._

When the SEPTA train shuddered into motion, Ethan wasn't aware enough to react and either move against it or hang onto something besides her; as a result, his sodden inertia was almost enough to jerk them both off their feet. Madison had to keep one arm wrapped around him and hastily brace the other against the nearest metal pole to keep them both upright while he belatedly fumbled to keep his balance.

_No no no no_, she thought with panic. _We're already enough of a spectacle_. _At least let us not end up on the floor._

As soon as she felt steady enough, she guided Ethan's downward momentum into the nearest empty window seat and slid down to sit on his right side, moving her left arm around him protectively while she risked a glance at the other occupants of the now-moving car.

_God bless city folks_, Madison thought with slightly hysterical relief. The two of them were already lucky in that the car wasn't particularly crowded. But even though they were both panting and Ethan was clearly blood-spattered and barely conscious, everyone else on the car was studiously focusing on anything but them: posters, newspapers, paperback books, each other. _Nobody wants to make eye contact with the crazy people_. She mentally crossed her fingers, hoping the other passengers would keep it up, and turned her attention back to Ethan.

He was definitely still gasping, quick and hard, his wounded hand curled awkwardly in towards his chest. His eyes were unfocused, gazing out into some infinite space.

"Ethan," Madison hissed into his ear, "What's wrong?" Maybe people weren't looking at them _yet_, but if he just straight-up passed out, there were definitely going to be some problems. He leaned his head back and made a strangled noise deep in his throat, but no clear words escaped. His jaw gaped desperately to admit more air. "I need you to calm down," she continued in an increasingly loud stage whisper, and as she said it, it struck her: _Is he just . . . having a panic attack? Is that what I've looked like all those times I've woken up in the middle of the night? Well, desperate times_ . . .

She set her teeth in anticipation, wrapped her left arm around his neck in what was almost a wrestler's hold, and clapped her left hand over his mouth. Oh, she had his attention now – she had him gripped so firmly that he couldn't turn his head, but his right eye, in profile, widened and rolled wildly towards her like a panicked animal's. He grabbed feebly at her hand with his unmutilated one, his back arching.

"Shh!" Madison snapped, a whisper so loud it was practically a scream. She could sense heads flickering briefly in their direction, then away again, uncomfortably. _Talk about not making a spectacle of ourselves; now I've added assault. All we need is the dancing girls_.

She held Ethan's gaze, his dark right eye darting frantically back and forth between both of her own, as she brought her right hand up, pushed his right nostril closed, and kept it there. They struggled tensely, almost motionlessly, while she willed him to cooperate. She dropped her volume level again and leaned in even closer, drawing out her words to breathe in his ear, "This . . . will . . . help!" _Well, not if he's having a heart attack, probably. I don't think I'll mention that to him_.

He blinked rapidly, then he stopped fighting her, and it slowly began to work. His right hand dropped to his lap, his visible eye closed, and he soon began drawing long, shuddery breaths, each one whistling faintly in and out of his left nostril while his ribcage jerked erratically. The measured intakes came more and more slowly, until he nodded decisively against the pressure of her arm and reached up to pull her hands away again. This time, she let him gently detach her fingers, and he melted back into the seat, eyes still closed, as she released her grip.

"It's all right," said Madison, still whispering, "I think you were just hyperventilating."

"Yeah," he wheezed softly, recovering, "Crowds."

"All right, good," she said, relieved to get confirmation of her diagnosis, and a split-second later thought with equal irritation, _Could've used that bit of information before, Captain Let's-Take-the-Subway_. She brushed the emotion aside; it didn't matter, now.

"Your doctor never taught you that trick?" she asked.

He shook his head wearily; "Paper bags."

"You've got a terrible doctor," Madison said venomously, and meant it. She'd learned the one-nostril trick from EMTs just after her first panic attack, when she'd thought she was dying. One of the few things that gave her comfort was that, after one of her terrifying dreams, she always already had the tools to control her own breathing. Ethan didn't respond to this statement, but it hardly mattered; Madison was looking furtively around the car again and realizing that while the good news was that no passengers getting on or off had confronted them in the last few stops, the bad news was that she had absolutely no idea where they were.

"Ethan, you listening?"

"Yes," he said, without opening his eyes. He was still gasping slightly, but it sounded like pain, rather than panic.

"Okay, we're still in a corner, here. It's not going to take them long to figure out how we got out of there, and they're looking for you. Hard. Maybe looking for _us_ hard, now. We need to get off this train pretty quick, and to get you attracting less attention. Make sense?"

"Yeah," he replied, and grimaced expressively as he sat fully upright.

"Let's look at that hand, first, then." She knew they had to take care of it, but she still couldn't help a sharp, sympathetic inwards hiss as she focused on it. Ethan gingerly pulled it away from his chest, his blood-sticky hand making a little _vrrrrt_ noise as it came loose from his shirt, like Velcro with the volume turned down all the way. Madison tried to block the sight of his hand from the rest of the passengers with her body, and stared at it with unwilling fascination. _God, it looks like hell, but at least it's just a finger_. "What happened? Is . . . is it burned, too?"

"Yeah," he said faintly, and she looked up to see him staring at the ceiling; it appeared he was having trouble looking at his hand at all. Well, that was fine, with any luck, he wouldn't have to. "I . . . my finger got cut off, so I burned it. The end of it."

It took a couple of blinks for that to sink in for Madison, while she tried to decide if she was more horrified, or more impressed by Ethan's gruesomely boy-scout-ish creativity. She gently grasped his left hand in both her own and tried a follow-up question as she looked it over. "That means you almost definitely can't reattach it, you know. Do you still have it? The, uh, your pinky?"

"No. It's still back there." A glance upwards indicated that his eyes were shut again now. Madison heard this with some resignation. _Even if he'd brought it with him, and even if he hadn't burned the stump, he'd probably still refuse to go to a doctor, even now. Especially now_. She also decided that the cauterization was amateurish enough that she was primarily horrified – it looked like he'd done it with an improvised tool poorly-suited for the job, so that it was still oozing in places.

"All right," she said, thinking fast. For the first time in her life, she was mentally kicking herself for not turning into her mother, who'd always carried one of those purses the size of Montana. _Mom probably would have had an entire clinic with her. And a disguise. And a subway map_. Madison had always liked the freedom of being a keys-and-wallet clip girl – only the necessities of her job had convinced her to regularly carry her cell phone and notebook – but here was a drawback she hadn't expected. "Ethan, do you have a handkerchief?"

"No," he said.

"Pocketknife?"

"No," he muttered through clenched teeth. "I used the axe."

". . . what?" _Did I hear that right?_ Taken aback, she looked hard at his face. "Ethan, what did you say?"

"Not the knife." His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, tendons standing out in his throat, and his voice sounded distant.

_Oh my god,_ she thought, _either he did this to himself, or he's going into shock and not making any sense. Or both._ _Anyway, girl, that was kind of a dumb question._ _The guy doesn't even own any clothes right now that aren't full of bloody holes, and I'm sure the cops just took his car. He's lucky if he has anything at all in his pockets, and I know he doesn't have any magical secret compartments under what he's wearing_.

Then, of course, she remembered what he _did_ have on under there.

"Okay, Ethan, lean forward," she whispered, pulling him gently to guide him. She let him lean against her slightly and slid her left hand up his back to feel for the butterfly bandages she'd used to keep the wrappings for the burns on his chest pinned in place. She smiled incredulously at her own ingenuity. "We are going to rob Peter to pay Paul."

It was an awkward position physically, they had nothing with which to cut off a length of gauze, and it certainly added to their crazy-people-on-public-transport vibe, but Madison carefully worked one end of Ethan's chest bandages free under his shirts and unwound a length of it. Within the concealing shadow of his coat, she wrapped the loose end carefully around the stump of Ethan's finger and then his hand; he grunted and flinched a few times, but cooperated as best he could. Now that they were so close and she wasn't completely panicking, she could smell alcohol on his breath. In fact, he fairly reeked of it. _Has he been drinking, too? That's probably not helping. __Doesn't shock mean you're cold? He doesn't feel cold.__  
_

"Actually," added Madison contemplatively as she ran out of loose bandage, unwilling to unwrap his burns completely, "just keep your whole hand under your shirt. Sort of hug yourself straight up the right side." He obediently tucked it in out of sight, rucking his shirts up slightly to accommodate its position and wheezing in pain as he did so. She fastened up his coat around it as best she could, both to cover up the awkwardness of what he was doing and to hold his arm in place. _God, now he looks like some sort of terrible Napoleon impersonator. Definitely not someone who should be allowed to dress himself in the morning. It's still better than having all that blood and gauze hanging out. Probably as good as it's going to get. At least his clothes are all so dark_. Fortunately, tying off the bandages had gotten the worst of the blood off her own hands.

_That was definitely necessary, but it took up way too much time. Or time went too fast again, whichever. I can't even tell any more. There must be a map of the subway line somewhere in the car._ She surreptitiously studied the other passengers, all of whom were still ignoring them, with the exception of a brightly curious little girl picking her nose and eying them thoughtfully. Madison tried not to make eye contact. "Okay, Ethan," she said briskly, "Sit tight." She thought she caught the barest nod from his strained-looking face as she helped him lean his body away from hers. She left him shuddering against the window and found a scratched map posted over the sliding doors, which she began to study hopefully. _Please, please let us be near a transfer point_. _Some way we can get back to the hotel. Forget it, whatever the next major stop is, we're getting off._

Madison waited for the mechanized voice to announce their location – she'd been too distracted to register a single one thus far – and then froze in dismay when it came. _Oh, no. We. Are. Nowhere._ They were obviously _somewhere_, and there was only one local stop between them and the next transfer point, but their location was so disastrous that she barely registered their entirely passing that tiny station while she thought frantically.

They were on the completely wrong side of the city. They'd been riding in the worst direction possible – away from the hotel, away from the major arteries that could get them to the hotel, practically away from civilization, towards where only the commuter trains ran. Though the train's route meant they still weren't that far from Marble Street, without their own transport, it would take ages to move back across the city and get the right connections. There was no way they could make it on foot, and no way they could make it that far on public transportation without drawing inevitable attention to themselves. _Do I dare call a taxi? Maybe. Whatever we do, we had better get off at the next stop, before we screw this up any further_. She turned back towards their seat. _Oh, no._

Ethan wasn't "sitting tight," but slumped so heavily against the window that he could only generously have been described to be "sitting" at all. Madison, once again thrown off-balance as the SEPTA train began to brake, stumbled back to him.

"Ethan? Ethan, we have to get off. Please, Ethan." When she pulled him back up into an upright position, his eyes opened alertly, and he was still breathing normally, but something was definitely wrong, wronger than it had been a few minutes ago. He seemed to have lost color in his face, a change emphasized by the darkness of his hair and stubble. He was ineptly trying to get to his feet as she worked his arm over her shoulders and hauled him upwards, but it took him a few tries to keep his right knee from buckling underneath him, and he was once again letting his head sag. Perhaps most worryingly for Madison, he didn't cry out in pain as she forced him along. They barely managed to shamble together off the train before the doors slid shut again.

_He's at least as bad as he was when he got on_, she thought, as she paused to readjust her grip and glance around the station. Once again, it appeared they were only getting sidelong looks, no full-on stares. _Is he just doing this on purpose, now?_

As though he could read her mind, Ethan managed to take some of his weight off her and mumble something that might have been either, "Sorry," or "S'all right." _Well, thank god for small favors_, she thought grimly.

Aloud, she said gently, "Okay Ethan, just keep your eyes shut and let me lead you. It's not incredibly crowded, but . . . just in case." He repeated his mumble and pressed his face into her shoulder. _All right, not the most convincing "troubled sweethearts" act ever, but I guess it'll have to do for now_. They moved forward painfully slowly, Madison trying to avoid other people as much as possible. It would be disastrous to attract even the attention of a too-helpful Good Samaritan. _Not like how fast we're going matters much until I figure out where it is we're heading to_. She glared up at the sign naming the station, "40th & Steel," silently demanding that it change. _We can't get a taxi like this_, she thought. _Drivers probably won't even pick us up or let me put him in the car in his state_. _And if they did, we just instantly became the most memorable fare of the day. Wherever we went, we'd be sitting ducks._ The trolleys were out of the question, as well as the buses. Maybe there was a car-rental place nearby? _I have no idea. Even if there is, won't they be looking for me by now? It's not like I have a fake ID on me that I could use to get one._

She was so preoccupied that she barely managed to avoid tripping over the bottom step of the stairs upward and give him the verbal heads-up of "Stairs, Ethan." And, of course, they were almost to the top of those stairs when he delivered his most clear pronouncement for a while: "Gotta sit down." Madison could tell through his shifting weight the trouble he was having navigating the staircase; he moved like his joints were working together by accident.

"No, you don't," she said, firmly. "Not here." _I'm pretty sure he's not lying, though_. She could feel that the arm around her shoulders was losing its grip, and he seemed to be getting heavier by the second. He probably was, as his legs got weaker. "Come on, just a little bit further." _Where? Somewhere_. _God, why did it have to be –_

_40th._ And she actually had to smile again as her second revelation of the day hit.

"You know, Ethan," she said, almost cheerfully hefting him up the top step, "I'd rather be lucky than smart."

Their luck held out for another half-block after they left the station, to the extent that neither Ethan's legs nor Madison's arms gave out before they were able to make it to a bus shelter with a bench in it.

"Okay, Ethan, here we go. Bench." He didn't react to her voice, and, as she lowered him onto the seat, he briefly panicked and grasped her in a desperate headlock, like a drowning man, before apparently understanding that he wasn't falling, but finally being allowed to sit. Madison wished there were room to lie him down instead, despite the attention it might attract, but it was broken up into small sections by armrests. _Probably to keep the homeless from doing the same thing._ Instead, she propped him up in a corner, left hand still improbably wedged in the depths of his jacket, while he tried weakly to help her position his body so that he wouldn't fall over. Exhausted, she seated herself beside him before she pulled out her phone and forcefully hit the speed dial.

"Oh god, Sam," she said as soon as she heard the receiver being lifted, "Please, please tell me you're home."

"Madison? Hello to you, too. You called my landline, babe, of course I'm home. Are you all right?" Relief washed over her at the sound of his voice; she leaned back and draped her left arm over her eyes, shutting out everything else.

"Sam, I need a huge favor."

"Don't you always?"

"No, really huge. Really, _really_ huge. _Ridiculously_ huge."

". . . well, all right, tell me what it is, and I'll see what I can do."

"Okay, I'm almost right by your apartment. I'm at, uh, 40th and, uh," Madison briefly lifted her arm to look around quickly, then recovered her eyes to concentrate on the cover story she was concocting. "Ball. I'm here with a friend, and he's sick, and he can't go to the doctor. Can we please come over? Just so he can lie down for a little while?"

There was a long pause, and Madison thought she knew why: _I haven't been over to actually see Sam in ages_. _I know, I can be such a jerk. Please don't let this be the time it comes back to bite me, even though I just lied to him a little on top of it_. _And that I'm wishing right now he had a car I could borrow instead of just an apartment._

And then, miraculously, Sam was slowly saying, "Well . . . I guess so. Is this like an insurance issue, or what?"

"I swear I'll tell you all about it when we get there. We're going to start on our way right now."

"Okay, I guess I'll get the magazines off the sofa." He still sounded doubtful, but she knew she had him.

"Thank you so much, Sam. You're a lifesaver!" Madison said hurriedly. She wondered if Sam had bandages handy, and thoughtlessly added, "You might want to put an old sheet down on that sofa, too. Just to keep it clean." _Oh, that was dumb,_ she immediately realized._ And if I remember what that sofa looks like, it's probably more important to keep Ethan clean._

Another long pause preceded what was going to be his next question, "All right, but – " at which point Madison guiltily turned her own phone off and sighed, allowing herself the luxury of another few seconds' rest in the comfort of her covered eyes. _This will work_, she thought. _This can happen_._ This can be fixed._ _There is a solution to this. Just a few blocks. Jeez, I hurt all over. _Her regular small vanity of trips to the gym had not prepared her for anything like this nightmare crawl, and she ached in muscles she'd never been forced to use this hard before for this long.

She reluctantly lowered her arm and turned her head to look back at Ethan. _No, no._ He'd gone completely slack, and gravity had pulled him into an awkward position. She hurriedly moved to hunker down in front of him. _Oh my god, his face is **gray**. I can see him breathing, but not much else even shows he's alive. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get him back on his feet again_. _I don't know if I **should**_. "Ethan?" she asked, cupping her hands around his face and noticing that even his lips seemed to have lost their color. "Oh, no, ohhhhhhh, no, of course your temperature's back up again. It would be." She tried grasping his arm tightly and shaking it, then his shoulder. "Ethan! Ethan, wake up!" His face briefly registered discomfort, but that was the only response she received.

For the first time on this plunge into danger, Madison felt absolutely certain that she'd done the wrong thing. She'd had her doubts, lots of them, from the moment they first met – should she really not get a doctor for this stranger? Should she really stalk him? Really help him escape from the police? Was he as guilty as the cops seemed to think, or innocent as her gut told her? But this was the first time she thought, _I've done everything wrong. All of it. _Ethan clearly needed serious medical attention, and she'd prevented him from receiving it. If he died now and he was innocent, she'd essentially helped to kill him. If he died now and he was guilty, she'd effectively killed his son as well. _Why did I think this was a good idea? Why did I think this was worth it? To write some story? To keep him to myself? To play out some weird nurse fantasy? _

That was when she started to cry, stopped, and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, because _nobody_ made Madison Paige cry: not the creeps she had to deal with to write her pieces, not the masked nightmares who threatened her, and especially not Madison Paige. And that thought was finally enough to make her reach up, feel through the fabric of Ethan's coat, grab the swaddled lump inside that was his bandaged hand, and _twist_. _Hard_.

Ethan's face came alive with shocked agony, his eyes shooting open, and Madison immediately seized her chance. She rocketed to her feet, hooking her hands under his armpits and once again hoisting him up with her into a standing position. They shuffled to the sidewalk and back out into the rain in a parody of an embrace, Ethan trying both to keep up with her and double over in pain. _No time for apologies. We've come this far. We're going on. This can be fixed. I'm going to make the worst thing I've ever done into the best. _


	2. Chapter 2

The journey to Sam's apartment was excruciating; Madison was convinced that both she and Ethan were running on sheer adrenaline and misery. She couldn't be bothered to talk any more, and Ethan, barely upright, appeared to be far past listening, though there were moments where she thought she heard him faintly attempt to gasp words. They shivered together, increasingly soaked, through the back alleys, stumbling over scattered trash bags, and most of the stumble there was a blur of pain and wet. Seeing the front door to Sam's apartment building made her feel like there should be an angel choir accompanying it. As a special hallelujah, when she kicked at the front door, his cheap landlord _still_ hadn't managed to replace the lock, so they bypassed the buzzer entirely. They barely slowed down on their tortuous course into the building.

Madison hit the elevator call button with all the force she could muster, and it cranked down at a respectable speed. _Just a few floors . . . _Losing their momentum meant that Ethan was starting to fade badly again, and he began to wobble dangerously. Madison's arms were trembling with the increasing, prolonged tension of holding him up. It was a short struggle on to the elevator, where Madison braced him awkwardly against the wall. They only had to make it to the third floor, and they'd be almost to the packrat's nest that Sam had slowly encrusted around himself over the years. Madison had never wanted to see it more badly, and when the elevator doors opened on the dim hallway, she felt a new rush of energy. They were only a few feet from Sam's door when she simultaneously heard a sigh and felt Ethan's body go entirely limp as he lost consciousness. She helped him crumple slowly into and slide down the wall – too exhausted to break his fall by herself – and let him lie prone as she once again checked to see if she'd killed him. Not yet, apparently; he was still breathing, but his pulse was fast and light, and he fairly radiated heat. _And I think we're both running out of times where god says, "Okay, I'll let this one more slide."_

She heaved herself to her feet and groped her way along the wall to Sam's door, where she tried to knock quietly but knew she was pounding, instead. Sam, bless his weird little heart, answered almost immediately – and only opened the door two inches, leaving the chain on.

"Madison?" he squinted out at her. With his stocky build and graying hair, he looked like a badger peering out of its hole.

"Yeah, Sam, me," she panted.

"For only coming from 40th and Ball, you sure took – "

"I need your help in the hall, Sam, he's fainted." _Please let him already have cleared off the sofa_.

Sam's eyes widened, but this was enough for him to close the door, and Madison could hear him taking off the chain before re-opening it and peering into the semi-darkness. "Wow, you weren't kidding," he said, and the two of them moved towards Ethan, Madison looking nervously up and down the hallway to see if Sam had any neighbors poking their heads out to investigate the noise.

"Boy, he is soaking wet," said Sam, kneeling down beside Ethan, "I guess I can take his shoulders, and you can get . . . Mad, I think this guy's _really_ sick. Are you sure we shouldn't call an ambulance?"

"No, Sam, please, let's just get him inside," she replied, starting to work her hands under Ethan's knees.

"In fact," Sam leaned closer in the dim light, "I don't think he's just sick, he looks _hurt_. This looks like blood, here."

"Sam!"

He glared at her, but let the desperate note in her voice bully him into hoisting Ethan by the shoulders. The two of them managed to carry in Ethan's dead weight, tripping past the stacks of newspapers and VHS tapes littering the interior hallway of Sam's apartment. They set the unconscious Ethan on the sofa, feet raised, without too much jostling.

Once he was safely there, Madison immediately set to work unfastening Ethan's coat to investigate the damage, while Sam furiously locked the front door behind her.

"Sam, do you have first-aid supplies?" She gently pulled Ethan's blood-smeared hand free from its makeshift cocoon under his clothing, and laid it on the hideous paisley sheet draping the sofa.

"Goddammit, Madison, what the hell's wrong with him? Has he been shot? Is he a criminal? Who is this guy?"

"Believe me, it is really important that he not go to the hospital. I am going to need some bandages and things here in a minute, Sam."

"Well, I've got some band-aids, but I'm not exactly set up for this, you know? This is _not_ okay, Madison, for you to do this. Christ, he smells like a bar that someone set on fire." He was storming to the sofa now, and stopped in shock: "I mean, JESUS, is that all blood?"

Madison was already wondering the same thing, thinking incoherently, _Oh my god, maybe he did get shot, someone said stop or I'll shoot and we didn't stop, I didn't hear a shot but I was sort of panicking, and maybe Ethan didn't feel it or didn't mention it because he's an idiot or something – _She'd gotten Ethan's coat open and his shirts pushed up, and his chest bandages were half-soaked with red, nothing like they'd looked after the last time she'd seen them. She hurriedly began yanking off all of his top layers, not trying to be gentle; it was pretty clear Ethan wasn't waking up any time soon. _And he feels so hot, too_. She ran her hands on and around his bandages, only vaguely aware that Sam was working himself into a fit in the background.

"What the fuck is going on? Did anyone see you come in? Answer me! That does it, Madison, I am calling the cops!"

"No, _please_ don't, Sam, look, it's okay, look," she said, genuinely relieved. _It's bad, but it's not that bad._ "See, he hurt himself before, he burned himself, so he had the bandages on. And then a little bit ago, he got his finger cut off – "

"Are you fucking kidding me, Mad? Oh, _shit_, look at his fucking _hand!_"

" – he just lost his finger, and I didn't bandage it quite right and he had it stuck in his shirt. See," she gently pulled back the bandages a little, "It's just smeared all over the top layer. I need to rebandage it, that's all. And we've just come through the rain, so everything is completely soaked. It's fine, it looks worse because it's wet." She tried not to look at the raw end of the finger itself, which she must have reopened with her abuse and which was now clearly openly seeping. _I swear I'm about to make it up to you, Ethan_.

"What about the blood all over the rest of him? There," asked Sam, pointing, "And there, and there?"

"That's just . . ." Madison started, and trailed off. _Oh no, oh, that __**is**__ bad._ All of Ethan's lacerations – the major ones on his right wrist that she'd so carefully bandaged before, plus the minor ones on his left arm and knees that she hadn't bothered with, had torn back open, wider and deeper, presumably during their run from the police. She hadn't noticed the fresh blood because he already looked so beaten up, and he probably hadn't noticed the pain because he already _was_ so beaten up. The whole time they'd been running, he'd been slowly bleeding out of numerous small wounds, the death of a thousand cuts. If he hadn't already been weakened from his injuries, it mightn't have mattered much – but, of course, he was. _Oh, crap_. The old and fresh blood stood out starkly, dark and bright, against his pale skin. _Come on, girl, stop staring and do something about it._ Madison ripped off his shoes. "You just have band-aids?"

Sam was practically stomping his foot with anger: "This is not a fucking field hospital, Mad, I don't have the resources and you're not doing this here."

"Where's the nearest drugstore?" She was starting to ease off Ethan's pants; he genuinely was so drenched with sweat and rain that she was having to wrestle with them a little, and she could feel that some of the blood had begun to glue them to his knees.

"It's across the street, damn you, you even passed it on the way in."

"I'll be right back," said Madison, "Put ice on his hand, and anything that's bleeding." She'd finally gotten Ethan's pants down and off, wincing at what looked like gravel embedded in his oozing knees and shins.

"Madison Paige finally comes over, and she dumps on me some fucked-up bleeding-to-death asshole. What if he wakes up?" Sam was in her face now, glaring at her almost eye-to-eye – he was not a tall man. Mentally daring him to stop her, Madison sidled past him and was already pretending to be completely engrossed in opening the chain on his apartment door when he yelled, "Fuck you! I'm not letting you back in!" She flew out into the hallway and down the stairs, giving the elevator a miss. _So tired,_ she thought_, but not having to carry Ethan is better than Christmas right now_.

_Sam won't throw him out_. _Or call the cops. Or even an ambulance. I asked him not to, and he's my friend, and too much of a basically decent guy. And much more curious than he's pretending to be. _

_And he's damn good at his job, too_, Madison added to herself as she ran across the street. Now that she was looking for it, she didn't know how she'd missed seeing the drugstore in the first place. _Don't forget how incredibly lucky you were to meet him, Miss Madison Paige, and how lucky you'll be if he ever forgives you for this. Incredible, this place has everything I need. Bandages, cotton balls, scissors, stuff to clean the cuts with, athletic tape, analgesics, I'll even get Sam a bag of ice. He is going to be pissed off about that ice. And why not, lunch for everyone. _She hesitated over using her credit card, settled up with cash, just in case, and took off at top speed back to their new hidey-hole. She once again ignored the street door entirely, but when she got to the third floor she found, to her surprise, that Sam's door was unlocked.

He was sitting on a chair he'd moved next to the sofa, peering down at Ethan – who appeared, she noticed abstractedly, to be covered in plastic. When Sam heard her enter, he turned his face towards her, his eyes bright, his head cocked, birdlike.

"Oh, Mad," he said. "I could _kiss_ you, I really could." Confused, she held out the bag of ice, which he ignored, going on: "I know you always say you'll owe me, but I never thought you'd come through like _this_. Man, when I gave you that info, I had no idea – I mean, _no_ idea! But you know that."

She was beginning to understand, though she didn't want to. "I need to – he's still – " She gestured towards Ethan, her hands full of plastic bags.

"Oh, yes, of course!" Sam sprang out of the chair he was occupying, offering it to her with an absentmindedly theatrical gesture. "Shit, the whole thing would be blown if the guy dies." He began to pace around the room, his rage clearly transformed into enthusiasm, as Madison took his seat. "Okay, let's see, we've got possession of Ethan Mars, Origami Killer. What's the plan? I'm sure you've worked something out, or you would've just called the cops. Are we going to wrestle an exclusive interview out of him first? Actually, hell, should he be tied up? I mean, I guess he's not going anywhere right now, but he should wake up eventually, right? I can't believe you wouldn't tell me on the phone when you called, but oh, hey, you're right, someone might have overheard you. I don't even know what I was thinking. How did you even get him here? I can't wait to hear it."

He went on, kicking into high gear, Madison's heart sinking as she listened. _Of course_, she scolded herself, _you brought the most wanted man in the city to the apartment of a guy who spends all day gathering and distributing information. The guy who gave you the tip about the police scanner chatter last night. What did you think would happen? That he wouldn't recognize him? He's always plugged into about ten sources at once._ She realized with a start that the reason Ethan looked so odd was that Sam had, apparently, filled multiple plastic sandwich baggies with ice cubes and dotted them haphazardly along the unconscious man's body, as well as packing one around the bleeding stump. _God, how can a guy be so smart at so much and be so bad at other things? Like reading this situation?_

"Actually, Mad," Sam was looking thoughtful now, "Can you give me a time extension? I want to go see if I can promise some deals. I mean, you'd have exclusive first, obviously, but I was thinking you _do _owe me, and maybe you could just take a few hours' head start, I could give some other people the heads up, and – "

"No, Sam, I don't – listen, just stop talking for a second," she said, exhaustion and anxiety turning her tone sharper than she meant it to, "I'm trying to help him! Let me help him!"

"Sure," said Sam absently, and Madison could tell that he was already gone, mentally working through his networks, oblivious to her larger meaning. "I'm just going to be in my study, writing up a few ideas." He scampered out of the room. _Gee, great, _thought Madison exasperatedly as she started to rebandage Ethan, _don't help. I don't need any help here with the bleeding man, no sir._

Madison got to work on Ethan's much-abused body, unwrapping, cleaning, wrapping, picking the gravel out of his abrasions, taking special care with his hand and its web of blood, burns, and bruises. _I never want to know how much of that I caused_. It was harder to dress his injuries this time – not only was there more to do, but Ethan was totally nonresponsive, she was even more tired, and she had to lift him by herself because of Sam's vanishing act. Though lying down seemed to have let some color back into his face, he was covered with a sheen of sweat. She risked trying to get some pills and a sip or two of water into him from one of the bottles she'd bought, and somehow managed to do so without his choking, though he didn't appear to approach anything like consciousness. _It's strange that the worse he gets, the more peaceful his face looks. At least he doesn't look like he's in pain when he's asleep._ _I hope he remembers almost nothing of this, I really do._

She guiltily began half-checking his fever, half-stroking his face, as she took her first real look around the apartment. _This place has gotten even worse since the last time_. Sam was an inveterate collector of all kinds of information, and the place was crammed with generations of media – from yellowing books to stacked spools of DVDs in the corner. She was pretty sure she'd identified which magazines had been hastily shoved off the sofa - mostly National Geographics and Playboys. She could even see the old familiar pile of reel-to-reel tapes in its usual corner, though it was partially obscured by a tangle of what looked like cell phone chargers and accessories. Practically all the flat surfaces she could see, and some of the vertical ones, were occupied by some sort of clutter. _He really needs to get out more,_ she thought critically, and immediately realized she was in no position to judge. _Maybe he would, if anyone ever asked him to._

She'd turned back to Ethan when she heard Sam's voice over her shoulder: "You just about done? Boy, you're right, I bet he sure did a number on my sofa. Soaked right through the sheet, even. I've got a short list of ways we can do this. You know Barry's been pretty desperate recently, right?" He'd come in behind her, and was rapidly tapping a mechanical pencil against a notebook in his hand.

"Sam, sit down for a minute so I can talk to you." Elbows on her knees, face in her hands, Madison had rarely ever wanted to do anything less.

"Shit, of course, I'm stepping on your toes. Sec." Sam moved enough books to clear a space for himself on another chair, facing her. "What do you want to do with this, Mad?"

_Sleep. I want to sleep_. She couldn't even think any more, she was reduced to basic truths: "I want to wait for him to wake up, and then I want to get him out of here, and then I want to help him find his son."

There was a short pause. Madison didn't look up, but she could feel Sam staring at her.

"Wow," he finally laughed. "All right, but what are we _going_ to do?"

It took her a long time to get it all out. "Just that, Sam. Listen. He's innocent. I _think_ he's innocent. I _know_ his son is missing, and he's going through hell. I think he's trying to find him. The cops are after him. I don't know exactly what's going on, but I think that if they find him, it'll only make things worse. I want to protect him from them, and from . . . I don't know, whatever else he's going through. I know what you want to say, but I really do. This needs to be a secret. I mean it. You can't tell anyone. At all. I wouldn't . . ." _No, girl, don't shouldn't say it, you know you'll regret it_, but then she went ahead and said it anyway: "I wouldn't even have told you if I didn't have to."

The silence that hung between them was palpably ugly. "Well, shit," he finally said.

"I'm sorry, Sam, I really want to do this. I really _need_ to do this."

"So. You actually just needed a really huge favor, just like you said. Just thought you'd bring this guy here, implicate me in his crimes, maybe send the cops to my door, without giving me a chance to say yes or no. Without telling me anything first." The familiar pitch of anger was back in his voice.

She nodded at the floor, not sure if she was hurting him or herself more with her admission. "Yeah, that's about right."

"I could be looking at aiding and abetting, here, dammit. And you just sort of assumed you could slip him by me? Have I ever given you occasion to think I'm _that_ bad at my job? When he's on my couch and I'm the guy that _gave you the fucking information?_ Do you know when the media got to release that? Half an hour ago, Madison!"

"No, Sam, I just . . ."

"You just ended up at 40th and Ball? Couldn't think of any other old friends you could screw with? Thought you could always use old Sam, that loser you only sometimes remember to pay or throw a byline to?"

Her silence was apparently enough confirmation for him, and she actually flinched when he whipped his notebook at the wall. Still, when he finally spoke again, his tone had inexplicably softened.

"Have you got any proof of this theory, Mad? You're playing with fire, here."

"No, just . . . a feeling. But, you know, if you call anyone, do anything with this, I won't have the chance to find that proof, either way." She finally looked him in the eyes. He'd lost all the anger out of them, but also all the enthusiasm. Sam usually ran at about ninety miles an hour, but now he'd just disappeared, emotionally.

There was a pause, and then Sam started their old routine with a sad, barely-there smile that went no farther than the corners of his mouth: "You're nuts."

She managed a weary half-smile back: "That's why you love me."

"All right, Madison, if that's the way you want it," Sam said. He looked bewildered, rising to his feet. "I'm just gonna go think some things over." He shuffled out of the room, and Madison let him go. They'd always had a complicated connection – he was just about old enough to be her father, but their conversations sometimes wandered from business to friendship to somewhere between the paternal and the flirtatious. They'd always done good work together, and he was right, she did owe him much more than the occasional credit she let him take as her source. And now she'd pretty much just let it all be thrown to hell, over something she had trouble putting into words.

Madison sighed heavily and leant over Ethan to rest her head and shoulder against the sofa, checking his bandages again. _I guess today's just my day for hurting guys I care about_, she thought regretfully, and rubbed her face against the ugly paisley sheet to help her focus. _Stop it, girl. You're being depressing. Nobody makes Madison Paige cry_. After a while, her thoughts stopped making sense.

The next thing she knew, Sam was pulling roughly at her elbow. "C'mon. The guy looks like he's been through a blender, and you're crushing him to death."

She started groggily and realized he was right. She'd fallen asleep on the chair, leaning against the back of the sofa, and slowly slid down in her sleep until she was partially resting across Ethan's pelvis. _At least I didn't have my elbow __**directly**__ jabbed in his broken ribs_, she groaned to herself, rubbing her eyes. She checked her phone; she'd probably only been asleep about half an hour.

"C'mon," Sam said again, curtly. "Bed." Madison nodded sleepily in response and followed him. His bedroom was just as much of a disaster as the living room, but he cleared a space for her in the nest of clothes that occupied his bed and walked wordlessly out. She curled up, just managing to kick off her shoes and set the alarm clock on her cell phone before she crashed again.

Two hours later, it was ringing, and she woke up hugging one of Sam's threadbare sweaters. She was still tired, but she was always tired these days. The important thing was that she wasn't completely exhausted. She made her way back into the living room, where, to her surprise, Sam was again sitting next to Ethan and looking down at him. At some point, Sam had draped Ethan's clothes across the radiator and thrown another grotesque sheet over him, this one plaid. She wondered warily what kind of a mood Sam had worked himself into by now.

"How is he?" she asked, still picking bits of sand out of her eyes.

Sam shrugged and vacated his seat. "I wouldn't know. Not dead, I guess." He watched as Madison sat down and briefly flipped the sheet up to see if Ethan had bled through his bandages. He hadn't, though a few showed light spots. She picked up the bottle of water she'd left by the sofa and chewed her lip thoughtfully.

"Sam, do you have a straw?" He disappeared wordlessly into the kitchen, emerging with what she'd asked for, in a fast food paper wrapper. He handed it to her and leaned back against the kitchen doorway, arms crossed. _Guess he's still pissed_, Madison thought ruefully, unwrapping the straw_. I bet he has a whole drawer full of these. And napkins. And takeout chopsticks._ She bent it, stuck it in the water bottle, and slipped the upper end in Ethan's mouth.

"Ethan," she urged, squeezing his shoulder again. "Ethan, can you drink this? Hey, Ethan, wake up." She hadn't held her hopes out for much of a response, but after a few repetitions of trying to rouse him and tightening her grip across his collarbone, his eyes opened halfway and he managed a few sips. "Hey, good. Keep going." Madison made the mistake of easing up the pressure on his shoulder, and quickly discovered that when she stopped the process, so did he, slipping back into full unconsciousness.

She repeated the motions, continually prodding Ethan into action and uncomfortably aware of Sam's eyes on her throughout. His stony silence made her uneasy. _What if he decides he's had enough? What do we do?_ When the bottle of water was nearly empty, Ethan seemed to fall more deeply asleep, and she let him be. She pulled the straw out of the bottle and downed the rest of the water herself, feeling pinned down by Sam's gaze.

When he spoke, his voice was gentle: "You know, I don't know how bad he's fucked up, but I have some of those prescription painkillers I got back when I had my knee fixed, don't remember what they're called. I'm not supposed to have them any more, but you know how it is, you just never throw old pills away."

She looked up, surprised. There was a softness in his eyes now, which she read as, _I understand_. "Thanks, Sam, but I don't think so. I'm honestly not sure how much stuff he's taken today or when, including the booze he apparently had at some point. Probably not a good idea. But, really. Thanks. Thank you." In the look that passed between them, she thought he acknowledged that she was thanking him for much more. _I wish I knew what he just saw between Ethan and me while I was doing that, so I could explain it to myself_.

"Nah, it makes sense. You know, I put those sandwiches you bought in the fridge. Want one?"

"Oh, god, thanks, Sam. I'd forgotten all about them."

"I guessed," he smiled, pointing at a large wet stain on the carpet with his foot, the spot where she'd dropped the bag of ice over two hours ago, as well as the several small ice bags she'd pulled off Ethan. She groaned aloud. "Don't worry about it, Mad, it's just water. I'll go liberate you a sandwich to spare you the contents of my fridge." He straightened and left the room.

She returned to inspecting Ethan. More bruises had had time to show themselves along his joints and ribs, so he looked disastrous. But he was cooler, and when she felt at his throat, his pulse seemed to be running at a more reasonable pace. She wished she had a way to check his blood pressure, which must have been dangerously low before. _If I had any actual medical training_, she thought with another flash of guilt, _I'd probably know how to do it_. He was still pretty filthy, but she couldn't think of a good way to wash him down without getting the bandages wet. _Anyway, I should probably let him keep sleeping._

Sam returned with turkey on wheat, some chips, and another bottle of water, which she accepted gratefully. While she tore into the food, he said cautiously, "So I was also thinking, Mad – there's still a story in this, isn't there?"

She took a long look at him, chewing. "Yeah," she finally said. "Yes, I'm pretty sure there is. No matter what happens, probably."

"I want in," he immediately responded. "You need anything – anything at all, I'm the guy you come to. Not fuckin' . . . Randy or something, with his stupid Bluetooth. Or Iris the Virus and all her little hooker friends. Or, or that weird little snitch I know you go to on the north side, the guy with the really weird teeth who you said looks like a date rapist."

She was already laughing; she couldn't help it, and she also already knew she had to say yes.

"Not," he continued, grinning himself now, "the one guy at the police station who'll actually talk to you because you let him check out your boobs – "

"I do not!" she responded in mock outrage, mouth half-full. She swallowed, and continued with rising hilarity, "He's just so fucking _short_ he has nowhere else to _look_!"

They were both laughing like lunatics now, and Madison felt like the sun had risen inside her body. _Oh thank god, it's fixed. We're okay now. I didn't completely screw up at least one thing today_. _If I can fix this, maybe I can fix what I've done to Ethan_. Aloud, she said, "Of course, Sam. You're my true sleazy scumbag love."

"_And_ when you write your first book, I get the dedication page."

"Don't push it, mister. But if it sells well enough, I _will_ buy you a sofa that doesn't look like you picked it up from Leland White's yard sale!"

"God," he said, wiping his nose. "And I didn't think I was ever going to forgive you for _that_ one. Not even charging your damn phone before wandering into that psycho's house."

She rolled her eyes and stood, wiping crumbs from her hands. "And I'm not dumb enough to think you're ever going to let me forget it. You know, I may have to do a little bit of my own investigative reporting while I'm doing this."

"I know, Mad. Just let me take first crack at giving you a hand."

"I've got to run out for a while, Sam."

He looked startled, gesturing towards Ethan. "What, and leave him here?"

"Got to. We need some transportation." She picked Ethan's pants off the radiator and rummaged through the pockets. _Keys. Bingo. Ethan's car is almost certainly gone by now, but it won't hurt to bring them_. _Huh, he's still got a cell phone in here._ She felt her fingers close over another of the origami figures she'd seen in Ethan's room at the hotel, and tried to thrust it from her mind. _He's innocent, I know he is_. She turned her attention back to Sam: "You still don't drive, right?"

He shook his head regretfully. "Don't even have a valid license any more. They can track you that way, you know."

"Not as well as you know it. Heck, you _are_ 'they.'" She headed for the door, a plan forming.

"Wait, what do I do if he wakes up?" he asked for the second time that day, looking alarmed.

She shrugged. "I don't think he will, but just make him drink something and don't let him leave. Tell him I'm on my way back. Sit on him if you have to." And with that, she was out the door, flying again. _This is going to be okay. There is a solution to this. This can be fixed_.


	3. Chapter 3

Getting back to Marble Street was ridiculously easy by herself. Madison gritted her teeth, told herself she was worrying too much about being recognized, and simply hopped on a bus. Nobody even looked twice. _Though the next time you're on the run_, she told herself, _you might want to wear a less distinctive jacket. _ She got off a few blocks away from Marble Street, and began slipping once again through the back alleyways towards her destination. She had to smile a little bit; she felt like she was thirteen again, going on one of those risky, stupid, adolescent "adventures" with her brothers. _This is actually sort of fun_, she thought, and then cut herself short. _There's a kid even younger than you were then whose life is at stake, Madison Paige. You can live it up later_.

All she had in front of her were long shots. If this proved to be a bust, she had a back-up, the car of a friend of a friend that was semi-abandoned. But that was further away, might not even be running, and Marble Street was on the way there anyway. Just down the street from the burned-out apartment, she peered around the corner. It looked like the cops had finished up; she didn't see any clearly visible. But it looked like they'd taken Ethan's car with them; a battered old Dodge had taken its space. _Makes sense. They've got to check it over for forensic evidence. Even if it were still here, that would probably mean there were cops here with it_. She edged out a little further and almost couldn't believe her eyes when she saw what the Dodge had been blocking from her line of sight: her motorcycle.

_Oh thank god, oh god, Carter Blake, I am almost sorry for all those times I wrote about you being an incompetent asshole, because that special, endearing quality of yours just might have saved me_._ Jeez, even the helmet is still there, and in this neighborhood . . ._ She slunk around the corner and began walking towards her bike as casually as she could.

**Interlude: Norman Jayden**

Down the street, an alarm went off in Norman Jayden's ear and he jerked himself upright so hard in the driver's seat he banged his knee painfully on the underside of the steering column. He scrambled to remove the ARI, and threw it hastily on the dashboard. _It actually fucking worked,_ he realized in shock. _Holy shit, it looks like something positive might come out of Blake's incompetence, after all._

He'd had a bad day. The hallucinatory ARI/tripto episode he'd had in his hotel room earlier had been possibly the worst yet, though it was hard to judge them quantitavely. Time had continued to blur for him even after he'd thrown himself into the shower, fully-clothed, and even now he wondered if it was worth it to keep resisting the drug – he was definitely running out of decent changes of clothing.

He'd decided to make a few stops on his way to Jackson Neville's, the first one being at the apartment of one Paige, Madison, whose name popped up when he ran the plates on Mystery Woman's motorcycle. The woman whom Blake had said they should just ignore because she might live in the Marble Street house, which turned to be a burned-out husk of a building – and you'd better believe Jayden had given him an earful about that on their way back to the station. The woman who'd barely managed to elude them in, of all places, a subway station with blocked exits, practically carrying Mars on her back. _That is a woman, _Jayden had silently decided,_ who makes some poor choices and has big brass balls. Big enough that she might just head back to her own apartment. _ Jayden had stopped there, but no luck; the neighbors swore she hadn't been home for days, which they said wasn't unusual. He hoped Blake managed to focus long enough to get a search warrant together for her place.

He'd sighed leaving her loft, and decided to do a quick run by the Marble Street place again. His frustration level at missing Mars there had been so high that he hadn't checked it over as thoroughly as he should have. _Though once you encounter a human finger on the floor, it is sort of hard to concentrate on anything else, particularly with Blake yelling up the stairs that you'd better get your ass in the fuckin' car: "We're done here, Norman!"_

As Jayden had pulled up to the apartment building for the second time, his rush of rage was such that for a second he thought it was going to send him off into la-la land again. Madison Paige's goddamn motorcycle was still sitting there. _Nobody even bothered to impound her bike?_ He picked up his phone and began to dial. _I'll get it picked up. See how that search warrant's coming along in the meanwhile._ And then he realized: _A woman like that might have big enough balls that she might just come back to check on her expensive-looking motorcycle._

It was a long shot, but so was everything Jayden was looking at right now. He hesitated, then decided, _Fuck it, I'll do it._ He attempted a quick ARI run-through of the apartment itself, which he soon realized was useless. _Should've known any evidence would be trampled to shit by now. Should I call Blake to get another pair of eyes on this stakeout? Oh, no, I think I've got a better idea, one that won't make me want to start throwing punches._

Jayden headed back to his car, parked it discreetly in an alley perpendicular to the motorcycle, and once again pulled up everything ARI could give him on Paige. _Excellent, there's photographs of this woman all over the place. _He asked ARI to digest her image and put itself on watch for her – not something he'd done often, but which was theoretically possible. _I'll give it an hour or so, and then if she doesn't show up, it's off to meet Mr. Neville_. With ARI keeping an eye out, he promptly withdrew into his private, virtual world, plowing back through files, looking for anything he'd missed.

He'd lost track of time – didn't he always? – and reacting to ARI's buzzing in his ear was like swimming upwards through layers of wet paper. He rubbed his eyes, adjusting to the relatively dim world around him, his time sense distorted, his coordination delayed. It took him a minute to focus on the slim, tomboyish figure across the street. _She's really there. Madison Paige, in the flesh, just walking down the damn sidewalk. Keys – are the keys in the ignition?_ They were. He hastily pushed the engine into life just as she reached her bike, and it lurched forwards slightly as he took it out of parking gear. _Oh shit, too soon, too soon!_ He cursed himself for his own disorientation.

Across the street, Paige's head shot upwards towards the sound of the motor, her helmet still in her hands, and she looked straight towards the windshield at him. There was a very long moment as their wide eyes met - his pale blue against her deep brown - mirrored startlement, each attempting to weigh their options in an instant.

_So much for a subtle tail_, thought Jayden. _This is rapidly approaching disaster._

Then they both sprang into motion. Paige was apparently trying to simultaneously put on her helmet and start her bike, a frenzy of awkward movement, and Jayden decided that his best possible remaining choice was to force a confrontation now. His own movements were no less awkward, pulling his gun while realizing, at the same time, that his car door was locked. _Shit, you idiot, it locks when you start the car._ He jabbed frantically at the lock. _I'm not going to make it out of the car in time, I'm not going to make it_.

He made it. Body memory kicked in, and somehow, without conscious thought, he was out of the car, on his feet, gun out, shouting, "FBI! Madison Paige! Hands up!" She followed his command with a jerky, startled movement, already astride her bike, having gotten her helmet into place. She whipped the faceplate towards him, made blank by reflected neon. _That's right, stay there, I've got you, Miss Paige_.

He began to near her, mentally working out just which sequence of instructions he should give to a suspect in this set of circumstances – _Christ, should I get her on the ground first, or her helmet off? _– and then it didn't matter, because as he stepped into the street, he was hit by something very big and very hard, full force impact. The world was roaring at him, and then he wasn't. Any. More.

The cold was the first thing he was aware of after that, and the wet. He realized he was curled up, so decided he was lying down. _Shit, I got hit by a car. I didn't look to cross the street and I got hit by a car. Christ, let someone have seen. Let someone have called an ambulance. This isn't good. Hit by a fucking car_._ Why was I in the street?_ The world spiraled out in front of him in an endless loop, and he tried to focus on the pitted asphalt in front of his face.

Eventually, he could. He moved everything, experimentally, and nothing felt broken. _You got hit by a car while you were after a suspect, Einstein. You were chasing what's his name, Korda, and you got hit by a car. No, you caught him. No, you were chasing Mars, and you got hit by a car. No, he got away, but closer._ _Paige – _slowly, Jayden gazed up and rotated his field of vision until he had identified, blurrily, the spot where Madison Paige had just been. It was empty. _Of course. That woman with big brass balls barely stopped for you when you had a gun pointed at her. You think she'd stick around at the scene of the accident that took you down?_ _Where's the asshole who hit me and didn't bother to stop?_

Jayden fought his way to his hands and knees, dizzily, struggling to believe that he wasn't seriously injured, realizing he'd been lying in the gutter between two parked cars. _How'd that asshole hit me in the first place?_ he wondered, and then, once he could taste the snot and the blood in his mouth, he knew. He'd have to check ARI's recording later to be sure, once he'd retrieved it from the dash of his still-running car, but he thought he knew what he'd see. _You just got hit by the ground, pal. You fell down all by yourself. You spent too long in outer space, you tried to take down a suspect right afterward, and you just ate asphalt. You're lucky you didn't shoot anyone while you were at it. Shit. Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiit._

He split his self-control between not screaming aloud in frustration and concentrating on crawling back to the car, propping himself against it. The metal was cold against his cheekbone. _Don't let anyone steal my gun before I can stand up to find it._ Shaking, he turned his face up against the rain. _Is it good or bad that I didn't tell Blake to join me on stakeout? I don't even know. My most solid lead to Mars' whereabouts is gone, but I don't have any 'splaining to do about it, because no one even knows I was here. And you know what? I think I'll keep it that way. _

When he could get up, when he could do it without falling down or vomiting on the hood of his car, when he thought he could find and pick up his gun without shooting himself in the foot, he was going to go find Neville, and he was going by himself. _At least if I get myself killed, I won't get my partner killed. Not even a waste of skin like Blake_.

He gazed down the street once more in the direction Paige's bike had been pointed. _You win this round, lady_, he thought mirthlessly. _But I am done fucking around for today. And one Mister Jackson Neville is about to find that out_.


	4. Chapter 4

Madison stashed her bike behind a dumpster, removed her helmet, and breathlessly looked behind her for the umpteenth time. _No sirens. Good_. She was still trying to process the sequence of events that had allowed her to escape. _That FBI guy, he just – fell over. Went pale as a fishbelly and hit the ground. I know my luck's been ridiculously good today, but did the guy trying to arrest me come alone __**and**__ suddenly have a fatal stroke?_

She shook her head – _no use speculating _– and strode briskly back to Sam's place, helmet in hand. He'd re-chained the door, and blinked nervously through the gap at her when she knocked. "Seriously, Mad," he hissed, "I've got a wanted guy in here and I'm nervous as a cat – you couldn't use the front-door intercom just once so I don't shit myself?"

"Sorry, Sam, just let me in. I've got my bike back. Ethan and I should probably get out of here. I think the authorities are looking for me, and I think you might count as one of my 'known associates.'"

"I don't have a problem with you leaving," he replied, unchaining the door again, "But he hasn't so much as made a peep since you left."

"Damn. Perfect." She tossed her helmet into one of the piles of clutter and stalked past Sam, back to the chair by Ethan's side. He was still obviously out cold, but had actually changed position since she'd seen him last, so that was a bonus. "Ethan," she said, more shrilly than she'd intended. He twitched slightly in his sleep.

"You seem a little freaked, Mad," Sam said doubtfully behind her, rechaining the door and eying the peephole. "Something you're not telling me? Again?"

"I just had a gun pointed at my head, Sam."

"What?" He sounded almost as on edge as when she'd first shown up with Ethan.

"I will _tell_ you all about it in a minute. I swear I'm not shutting you out. But I just . . . I need to get things going, here." She knew she was sounding defensive. "I'm sorry, I think I'm a little more spooked than I realized."

"No problem. Okay. Right. I think I might just go check some things in the study."

"Yeah," she said, laying her hand on Ethan's chest, "That might be for the best." _Not just because Ethan might get skittish_, she added mentally, _but because I know you love being plugged in and you need to calm the hell down, so __**I **__can calm the hell down._

Sam beat a retreat, and Madison began trying to wake Ethan up in earnest. She flipped the sheet up, checking his bandages again in what was beginning to feel like some sort of OCD ritual. _I could probably just shake him a little, but it seems like he's hurt everywhere, and I don't know where to grab him without . . . torturing him. Again._ It was hard to admit that that was what she'd done, and instead of thinking about it, she grabbed some clean gauze and went to the kitchen to wet it down. She doubted Sam had any clean kitchen towels or dishcloths.

Returning, she started wiping Ethan's face with the fabric. He grunted and moved his face away from the cold cloth. _Good_. "Ethan? Ethan, I need you to wake up."

He came to slowly, whimpering, and when he first made eye contact with her, she saw no recognition there. _Oh god please don't have brain damage or something_. Then something seemed to turn the switch in his brain to "on," and his body jerked briefly in surprise. The immediate resulting tension in his face told her that even that small motion had hurt a little. She tried a reassuring smile, but she wasn't sure how tense her own face still was.

"Madison?" he slurred, "What's going on?" And then, more clearly, "Where are we?"

"At a friend's place," she replied, and his face took on an expression of deep dismay that she thought probably had nothing to do with the pain he was in.

"No, we've – I've got to get back to the hotel. It's very important. I have to go." He tried to struggle to a sitting position and Madison put out her hands to stop him, then changed her mind. _Might as well see what we're dealing with_. She pushed aside the chair Sam had placed by the sofa so Ethan could swing his legs over the edge, and helped him sit up. He was trembling with the effort by the time he had made it fully upright, and he seemed paler again. _Well, that's not promising._

"Okay, Ethan, hold on. Get your bearings." She kept one hand on his shoulder; he looked both like he was trying to refocus his vision and like he might fall over, and was still shaking. _Poor guy's almost naked_. "Are you cold?" He gave a tiny nod, and she wrapped the plaid sheet around him, wishing there was a blanket in the apartment that wasn't covered by ten tons of Sam's dirty clothing.

"What time is it?" he asked, and when she told him, he started shaking his head, "Oh, no, no, it can't be, we have to go." He tried to rise to his feet, and this time she held him down. His attempt was so feeble that it took a depressingly small amount of effort on her part. "You don't understand, I have to get going, there's something I have to do."

"Ethan, right now you're in no condition to go anywhere, and I can't carry you," she responded, mentally adding, _Any more than I already have_.

"I'll be all right," he protested.

"I hope so, but right now I want you to try to eat something, okay? You need something else in your stomach besides pills and alcohol." _God, I sound like I'm implying he's Sid Vicious._ Weaving slightly, he nodded wearily, and she leant him against the back of the sofa before she headed to the kitchen. The interior of Sam's fridge was almost as bad as he'd implied – all mostly-empty condiment bottles and odorous takeout containers – but he'd simply left everything she'd bought in the store's plastic bag and shoved it in together, so at least that was easy to find and grab. She heard a thumping noise from the other room and quickly turned back – _Dammit_. Ethan was on the floor next to the sofa now, leaning against it with his legs sprawled and his head bowed towards his chest. The plaid sheet had settled on the floor around him. He'd clearly tried to stand up and failed miserably. _Maybe this is all part of my punishment for hurting these guys today_, she thought, hurrying back, _having them be idiots. Fine, let him stay there, then._

She crouched in front of Ethan and, opening a bottle of water, simply thrust it at him. "Drink," she commanded. He flailed briefly at it with his left hand, seemed to visibly remember why _that_ was a bad idea, and shifted his weight to successfully grasp it with his right. Once he'd maneuvered the open end into his mouth, he started drinking so quickly and convulsively that a significant amount dribbled down onto his chest.

"Easy, easy," counseled Madison, and forcefully tipped it away from him, while he gasped for breath. "It's all yours, but take it slow." She let go to unwrap a sandwich, and he instantly started choking down the liquid again. "Ethan!" She pulled the bottle away entirely. "Slow down!"

He looked at her then, and the hurt betrayal she saw in his eyes made her pull back briefly, wondering, _What does he know?_ Madison took a deep breath, realizing, _Think, girl. His son is missing and only has so long to live, you're already delaying him by not letting him leave, and now you're telling him to slow down_.

"Listen, Ethan," she said seriously, looking into those hurt eyes, "You do _not_ have a lot of friends right now. I might be the only friend you _do_ have, and I am trying to help you. I will get you to the hotel. I promise I will get you there, and that we are going to go as soon as I think it's safe. But if you accidentally make yourself sick, right, if you throw up, you are probably going to crash and we are going to have to start all over. I am helping you whether you like it or not." She allowed herself a small smile. "All right?"

He dropped his eyes, nodded, and held his hand out. "Okay then," she said. "Sandwich or water?"

"Water." She handed it back, thinking, _Thank god I got the six-pack_. She finished unwrapping the sandwich while he demolished the rest of the water bottle, albeit at a more reasonable pace, then handed it to him. It appeared to be some fairly limp roast beef, but she wasn't sure it mattered. He certainly didn't ask before attacking it.

"Chew, Ethan. What do you remember?" she asked pointedly. "About earlier."

Answering the question did slow down his eating slightly, though his mouth was never entirely empty. His eyes rose to meet hers. "We . . . you came to the house. Why were you at the house?"

"I followed you there," she admitted frankly. If she wanted answers out of him, she might as well start giving up some of her own. "We can talk about it later. And after that?"

His eyebrows were drawn together suspiciously now, but he thankfully kept going. "You were helping me get away, and the cops were chasing us. We made it into the subway." His eyes widened with the memory. "We almost got _hit_ by the subway, and then we got on the train. And then . . . not much. I guess I was sort of in and out of it."

"Mostly out," she contributed.

"Oh, and you taught me the thing, the thing with your hands."

"What?"

Ethan performed a brief pantomime of covering his mouth with his hand, a task made more difficult by the fact that both hand and mouth contained sandwich. "For breathing."

"Oh, I'm glad you remember that," said Madison, a little surprised and suddenly shy. "It's really pretty useful for stuff like – well, like what you were going through."

"Sorry about that," he added, looking down again. "Embarrassing."

"Embarrassing, he says. Ethan, you're eating a sandwich in your underwear. And socks. On the floor. I think we're past 'embarrassing' at this point."

That actually got a little smile out of him, or at least a not-ghastly-look of despair. "So where are we now, again?" He'd finished the sandwich, and she handed him another bottle of water without prompting.

"We're at my friend's apartment," she repeated while Ethan drank again. "I have to tell you, there's a decent-sized manhunt out for you. My friend's a little nervous about the whole thing, so he's in the other room. You and I accidentally ended up all the way across town from the hotel, but I think I've got a way to go back there. We just need to get you in good enough shape to get moving. Speaking of which, want to get back on the sofa?"

He nodded, and she helped to ease him upwards and back. He moaned as he got his limbs to cooperate with hers, baring his teeth. "How bad does it hurt?" she asked, rewrapping him in the plaid sheet.

He seemed to consider this, wincing. "Pretty bad," he finally admitted. _I believe him_. All of his breaths ended in tiny shuddering noises.

"Okay, I think you can probably have a few more pills at this point, but you let me know right away if you start to feel worse, all right? Dizzier?"

"Yeah. I think you'll probably find out pretty quick, anyway." _Wow, even a touch of humor this time_. She fetched him the minimum dose and eyed him doubtfully as he swallowed.

"All right," she said as he rested his head against the sofa's back, "We have to get out of here, but we can't leave just yet. I need to take care of a few things with our host, and you need to lie down for a little bit more, give the food and drugs time to kick in." She felt almost sad when he didn't even protest, sinking instead back down into the stained and grotesquely mismatched sheets. _I don't know if it's perseverance or stubbornness, but he's usually got at least that going for him._ He did manage to settle himself prone while she was talking, so that was encouraging. "Look, I bought a ton of water and Gatorade, and there's still another sandwich. I'm going to leave it all here next to your head, okay? Help yourself." No answer but a heavy sigh, which probably signified his going back to sleep. His face was almost already peaceful again.

Madison headed into Sam's inner sanctum. If the rest of his apartment was verging on the edge of him being a diagnosable hoarder, his home office was mind-blowing in a different way. Just as packed, and, to her eye, just as disordered, but packed floor-to-ceiling in the tools of his trade: reference manuals, modems, multiple phones, multiple monitors, desktop and laptop computers, cables, notebooks, a filing cabinet here and there . . . it really was, believably, the lair of an evil genius. Most of it wasn't new, and some of it, she'd never seen turned on, but she suspected it all had purpose.

"Okay, Sam," she said, coming up behind him.

"Yeah," he said, whirling around in his office chair, headset on, pointing to a pile of phone books for Madison, "You can sit on that. No, not you, idiot," he continued, shouting into his headset mouthpiece, "I have a goddamned visitor. Yes, I damn well do. No, you know what? I'm just going to call you back, Rachel." He did something with his hands to disconnect the call. "How's your pet serial killer?"

"He's not my . . . he's better, definitely. Down to business, Sam. I need two things from you, ASAP." Sam obligingly pulled a tiny netbook from somewhere and set it on his lap, hands poised attentively. "One, there's a guy from the FBI who's working with the police now, I think only on the Origami Killer thing. They said they'd gotten some profiler, so I guess it's him." Sam nodded; of course he would have already heard the official police press briefing. "Skinny guy, looks about twelve. I never saw him before this afternoon, but I need everything you can get me on him."

"Uh, okay, like what?" The staccato sound of his typing was impressively fast.

"Well . . ." she hesitated.

"C'mon, it's sharing time."

"Like, is he dead? _Recently _dead? _Very, very recently_ dead?"

"Oh, shit, Mad." Sam had stopped typing entirely, and he looked horrified. "Tell me you did not kill a fucking federal agent today."

"God, Sam, I never laid a hand on him. But remember that gun that was pointed at my head while I was getting my bike?"

"Only by reputation."

"He was on the other end of it, and I swear I didn't do anything special or brave or particularly heroic to get away. He just . . . fell down and didn't move any more, and I made a break for it. I don't know if the guy passed out, or had a fatal heart attack, or got shot in the back, or what."

"Jesus, that's weird." He sounded more intrigued than horrified, and was busy with the keyboard again.

"It might be important, I don't know. I have a hunch he might have been the only guy looking for me, so his death . . . ?" She shrugged. "If he's still up and about, give me what you can on him. Name, background, all that. All the basics. Any phone number you can give me would be great."

"You want to _call_ the guy who pointed a gun at you and then was struck down by the angry hand of god?"

"Maybe. You never know. At any rate, it would be nice to be able to not answer if he tries to call _my _phone."

Sam bobbed his head in a "good point" gesture. "Where did all this happen, by the way?"

"That's the other thing I want to ask you. I was getting my bike back from in front of some house on Marble Street. 9711 Marble Street. Nobody lives there; it's all burned out on the inside. I need you to find out who owns it, and how I can get in touch with them. I think they might have some connection to this whole business, or at least know someone who does, or who might be using the space. Something pretty screwed up happened to Ethan in there, and I want to know why."

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "I'll call you when I get the info. Anything else?"

Madison thought for a second, then shook her head and rose from her dusty seat. "That's it for now. I think we're going to try to get out of here."

"All right," Sam replied, gazing after her from his chair. She was almost out the door when he called after her, "You be careful, Madison Paige."

She smiled and, impulsively, came back in to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll try, Sam."

"I have to say, Mad, it was worth you coming here with that guy, because I love to watch you walk away."

She gave him a mock snarl and slammed the door on her way out.

In the living room, Ethan was clearly asleep again, his mouth hanging open, even after the bang of the door not fifteen feet away. _I hate to wake him again_, thought Madison, _I don't even know how much of his problem is his injuries, and how much is just exhaustion. But I know he wants me to_. She sighed and began to gather together the medical supplies as a time-killing measure. _Better take them along, just in case_. She placed them by the door in one of her shopping bags, and started gathering up Ethan's clothes off the hissing radiator. They were mostly dried, but felt stiff and grimy in her hands. _Oh, no, why didn't I think to wash his clothes? They're disgusting. I don't even know if they're wearable_. She hesitated over whether to get some of Sam's – with or without asking – but there was no way they'd fit Ethan. _He's done enough for me today, anyway. Time to just bite the bullet._

She went through the routine of waking Ethan once again, this time rubbing his chest until his eyes began to peel open. He looked around wildly.

"Madison? Where - ?"

Thankfully, she was able to control her own answering panic before helping him work through his brief disorientation. "It's okay, Ethan, we're safe. You're safe. My friend's place, remember?" He relaxed as he processed his surroundings, but was so stiff it was nearly incapacitating; he needed her help again to sit up, and she handed him another bottle of water and the last sandwich as soon as he'd made it. _Oh, god, I bought an egg salad sandwich from a drugstore. I hope he doesn't just die of food poisoning._ "Here's the catch, Ethan," she said, as he chewed blearily. "We've got to go on my motorcycle. You don't have to do anything but hold on and balance when we turn corners, but I've got to be sure you're up to that, okay? So if you start to feel out of it, or if I feel like you're losing your grip, we're going to stop immediately. Make sense?"

He shot her a weary thumbs-up and said, "Can I have my clothes?"

"Well, that's the other catch. I . . . you know, I'm not even sure your sweater will _bend_ any more."

"I'm sure it'll be soaking wet soon enough. Where's the bathroom?"

She had to help him up and support him on the way there, before she handed his clothes to him through the door. But when he came out, he was doing pretty well on his own. Gingerly fingering his broken ribs and moving like an old man, but moving. _Damn, _she thought with surprise, _I can't believe he's up and about. He's like Wile E. Coyote. I'm going to try dropping an anvil on him, next._

"It's getting better," he said, when she caught his eye meaningfully. "Your friend's bathroom is a little, uh."

"I should have warned you, he was raised by a family of wolves that was raised by a family of pigs," she replied, and handed him her helmet. "It'll be a little snug, but it probably makes more sense for you to wear it than me, you being such a celebrity and all." He squeezed into it immediately and nodded. They headed slowly out the door and down the stairs together, her plastic bag of medical supplies dangling from one hand. _Guess I ended up carrying Mom's purse after all_, she thought wryly. He only stumbled a little bit going down the front steps and out into the rain, but managed well otherwise.

At the bike, Madison stashed the plastic bag and fished around for her spare pair of sunglasses so that she could see once they hit the road. _Not gonna be a fun trip_. She guided the bike out to the road and got astride it, pointing out to Ethan where he should put his feet. "Right," she said, "Just keep your arms tight around me, and your head down." He obligingly reached around her to grasp his left wrist in his right hand, letting his bandaged hand stick out awkwardly, and nestled his head against her shoulder.

They headed back to the hotel. It was a quiet, slow ride; they passed almost no cops, and traffic was light. Most of Madison's attention was consumed by maneuvering on the wet pavement and dealing with the awkward balance of her inexperienced passenger; she could feel his arms clench nervously on every corner. She wasn't sure about Ethan, but she knew she was glad for their enforced silence. Pretty soon, some questions were going to have to be asked and answered in earnest. She was afraid of completely losing her professional cool around him, and wasn't looking forward to answering questions about the kinds of things he was probably starting to wonder about her, in return.

Ethan removed the helmet – rather unwisely, she thought – as soon as they came to a stop in the parking lot of the hotel. "Can't breathe in there," he said, and he did look a little flushed, for a change. He handed it back to her as they dismounted and regarded each other briefly.

"Listen," she said, "I know you've been running yourself ragged and you've still got . . . things to do. I'm going to go out and get you some supplies so you can't forget to feed yourself again, all right?" He looked at her doubtfully and she rushed ahead, not wanting to give him a chance to refuse. "Do you think you can make it up the stairs? I can come with you."

"No, it'll, I'll be fine." He gave her a crooked smile and moved off, still stiffly, then turned back briefly to say, "Thank you, Madison."

_And by that, he means, "Good-bye, Madison_," she reflected, watching him lean heavily on the banister as he began to ascend the stairs. _Well, we'll just see about that. I bet I can make it to the corner store and back before he even makes it up to his room. Then maybe we'll have to have a sit-down to see what's what._

As she walked off, her phone rang, and she smiled at the name that popped up on the screen before she answered.

"Hi, Sam. It's been ages."

"Mad! I think I've got what you need on Mr. FBI. Far as I can tell, he's not dead, or at least he didn't die today on Marble Street. But if he's involved with the technology program I think he is, I want _you_ to go find him, because I think I want to kill him and have his job. Either that or marry him. Gimme a sec and I'll rattle off his vital statistics for you."

She laughed as she got out her notebook, still walking briskly. "Ready when you are, Sam." As she waited for his response, she wondered, _What should I grab for Ethan to eat? I've no idea what he likes when he's not starving to death. Well, that's all right, there are solutions to that. That can be fixed_. She smiled to herself.

There were solutions to almost everything.

* * *

**Author's note: **

The end. I was trying to be a little playful with the language in this piece to allude to the fact that it attempts, in part, to "fix" some of the strange writing gaps in the original, and I hope it wasn't too heavy-handed. (Why does Madison still have her bike after "Fugitive," and why isn't Norman smart enough to track her down, given that she abandons it? Why does she have Norman's phone number? How do Madison and Ethan get off the subway?) Of course, it's not a perfect fix - every little change you make means something else, somewhere else, now makes slightly less sense. I'm sure I've missed out on something that I've completely screwed up; I'm even now shaking my head because I can't do anything about the fact that Norman sounds like he's never heard of Madison when he finds traces of her in "Fish Tank."

I wrote two different Sams, but the version I've just published made more sense than the original one. I sort of like him. And, of course, the joke in the first chapter is that it **is** all relative as to just how Madison ends up on the subway tracks, as the storyline may change slightly for each player. Anyway, I've never written a piece of fanfic before, but I had fun letting this keep me from getting my real work done. **  
**


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